Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator first broke the story of how United Church of Christ officials met with kindred spirit/FCC Commissioner Michael Copps earlier this month before launching a nationwide campaign to pressure the FCC to crack down on cable TV and talk radio figures.

* Media change of all kinds must expose and directly confront the mechanics of structural racism and systemic oppression.
* Leaders from historically marginalized communities must be developed as effective media activists and strategic movement communicators.
* Media policy advocacy and strategic communications are more effective when clearly relevant to the primary justice issues of the movement for racial justice, economic and gender equity, and youth rights.
* Compelling communications and media activism campaigns must be both rooted in critical issues and coordinated across issue, sector, and region for national impact.
* When justice sectors strengthen communications strategies, center the use of culture as a communications tool, employ winning frames and messages, and strengthen their influence over media rules and rights, the possibilities for transformative change skyrocket.

“Transformative change” = a media landscape purged of the Right’s most powerful voices.

How the FCC and liberal churches are scheming to shut you up
by Michelle MalkinCreators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

The war on conservative speech has moved from the White House to your neighborhood pews. Left-wing church leaders want the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on “hate speech” over cable TV and right-leaning talk radio airwaves. President Obama’s speech-stifling bureaucrats seem all too happy to oblige.

Over the past week, an outfit called “So We Might See” has conducted a nationwide fast to protest “media violence” – specifically, “anti-immigrant hate speech, which employs flawed arguments to appeal to fears rather than facts.” Their ire is currently aimed at Fox News and conservative talk show giants. But how long before they target ordinary citizens who call in to complain about the government’s systemic refusal to enforce federal sanctions on illegal alien employers or the bloody consequences of lax deportation policies?

The “interfaith coalition for media justice” is led by the United Church of Christ. Yes, that’s the same church of Obama’s race-baiting, Jew-bashing ex-pastor Jeremiah Wright. Other members include the Presbyterian News Service, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the National Council of Churches. (The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has denied being a part of the campaign, despite being listed as a coalition member. So has the Methodist church.) These religious liberals have partnered with the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which filed a petition in January demanding that the FCC collect data, seek public comment, and “explore options” for combating “hate speech” from staunch critics of illegal immigration.

Open-borders groups have sought to marginalize, criminalize, and demonize those of us who have raised our voices for years about lax immigration enforcement — and to impose an Orwellian Fairness Doctrine-style policy on illegal alien amnesty opponents. During the presidential campaign, the National Council of La Raza launched a “We Can Stop the Hate” project to redefine tough policy criticism from the Right as “hate.” La Raza president Janet Murguia called for TV networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves and argued that hate speech should not be tolerated, “even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights,” according to the NYTimes.

Last week, United Church of Christ officials met privately with Obama FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps in advance of the “So We Might See” campaign. Copps then delivered a lecture at the UCC’s Riverside Church in New York City, expressing solidarity with the liberal church leaders’ goals and egging the congregants to take action on “media reform: ”We are taking huge risks with our democracy. We need to change that and we need to do it now. We need to get a grip on what’s happening and we need to fix it.”

Jeffrey Lord, who happens to belong to the United Church of Christ, reported in the American Spectator that not long after that speech, the UCC sent out a mass e-mail to its millions of members urging them to join the nationwide fast and regulatory drive. The church-state alliance missive directed its followers: “As a participant, you will be asked to sign a petition to the Federal Communications Commission asking that it open a notice of inquiry into hate speech in the media.”

No word on when they’ll be launching an inquiry into the fear-based, fact-free “hate speech” from the mouth of Florida Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson, who accused Republicans of wanting sick patients to “die quickly,” likened health care problems to the “Holocaust,” and attacked an adviser to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as a “K Street whore.”